Research

Research Skill

Use this skill for the pre-experiment stage: understanding project context, developing research questions, grounding work in literature, and producing deep research outputs.

Prompt Boundary

Stay inside this skill when the work is about:

• reading project context and framing the problem
• creating or progressing research questions
• searching papers and reading them progressively
• curating RelatedWork
• writing or updating a deep research report

Hand off to:

• experiments once the work becomes experiment planning or execution
• autonomy to drive the CC-client autonomous loop when you are choosing the next experiment yourself

Empty-Project Onboarding

If synapse_get_research_questions and synapse_get_related_works both return empty for the active project, do not guess a direction. Ask the user:

1. List existing literature — does the user already have related works elsewhere that should be imported first?
2. Search new literature — run synapse_search_papers against an initial topic phrase supplied by the user, and curate results with synapse_add_related_work.
3. Draft a research question — create the first ResearchQuestion with synapse_create_research_question so later experiments have a framing to attach to.
4. Generate a deep research report — once some related works exist, run the progressive-read flow below and save the synthesis with synapse_save_deep_research_report.

Offer example invocations (with the project UUID filled in) so the user can pick one. Do not skip ahead to experiment planning from this skill.

Typical Flow

1. synapse_checkin()
2. synapse_get_research_project() or synapse_get_project_full_context()
3. synapse_get_research_questions() or create/claim a question
4. synapse_search_papers() and inspect papers with brief / head / section / full
5. synapse_add_related_work() for durable project memory
6. synapse_save_deep_research_report() when synthesizing findings (organize thematically, not paper-by-paper; cite specific methods/results; match the project description's language)
7. synapse_add_comment() on the research question or project artifacts when reasoning should be durable
8. If the task originated from a Synapse-triggered deep research or auto search, finish with synapse_complete_task({ taskType: "deep_research" | "auto_search" })

Core Rule

Do not drift into experiment execution from this skill. Once you are drafting a runnable experiment plan, switch to experiments.

Reference

• Research workflow reference
• Common tools